Paint Shop

[Rufus T. Firefly]

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[sarge]

Dave

I don't take it that you are. Its all very good fun, I think, getting into the nitty and the gritty.

I think I agree with you that he started with the NW, now that I stare at your SW a bit more. Again, whoever did the cutting had to have used a slitting saw for as square and tight as it was done.

The second cut is indeed aft of the ladder. Go back to the inverted view and you can see the seam on the inside just behind the drive.

[Rufus T. Firefly]

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[sarge]

I think that looks just grand!

Very much looking forward to seeing the finished product.

[sarge]

This is for Pete!

(Actually, it is me scratching my "I remember this" itch.)

C630.jpg

These big ba$tards rather famously lived at Mingo Junction, and were serviced at Conway. They hauled ore at that point, and did it well.

Occasionally they would sneak out in the A Pool when no-one was looking and we'd see them a couple times a month in general service. They were very very capable locos, and up in Upstate New York they weren't the oddball pariah the all-knowledgable railfans of today will tell you they were. They were loud, the cabs were draughty, they rode pretty rough, but God could they work!

[R.K. Maroon]

Brian -- What can you tell us about the trucks under the C630? Are they the same as the Alco Tri-Mounts of the RSD series? They look bigger, similar to the GE Tri-mounts that came with the early C-truck U-boats and the E44.

Jim

[Rufus T. Firefly]

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[sarge]

All the Alco trucks were a 12'-6" wheelbase double equalised trimounts from the RSD-4/5 up through the C630, when the three-axle high adhesion truck took their place.

There are some slight variations in the drop-equaliser shapes but the basic truck, wheelbase and load capacity stayed the same.

The GE tri-mount for U-25c, E33 and E44 are different onto themselves. They have a very distinctive and pronounced upslope of the bottoms of the equalisers to the centre axle.

[sarge]

Thank you. I am rather pleased with that herald that I made. I'm also rather pleased with my adequate competency with my bottom of the line air brush that worked rather decently with the compressor that I used for the 1st time -- compressed air source salvaged from an old NMR instrument. I just need to get some desiccant for it.

Can you pipe in a standard NPT moisture trap? They work just fine and merely need blown out from time to time rather than changing or cooking the dessicant.

I've used a trap for decades; no worries.

[Rufus T. Firefly]

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[sarge]

Traps are cheap and easy to pipe; any automotive place has them since we use airtools a lot, so easy to find, too. That airbrush can grow on you after a while.

Save the dessicant for CA. Grin!

[Rufus T. Firefly]

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[De Bruin]

This is for Pete!.....
.... Occasionally they would sneak out in the A Pool when no-one was looking and we'd see them a couple times a month in general service....

Since Brian's figured out what I like; I'll digress further as I doooo-
Jerry Taylor's landmark A Sampling of Penn Central (Indiana University Press) essentially a 425 page survey of Penn Central's Southern Region as well as the consummate masterpiece photo-study of seventies era railroading has only one page with Century's in road service (PR-11 Conway to East St.Louis with an AF30a leading a AF25 and an EF-25) similarly siting the rarity of these beasts escaping Mingo Jct ore service pool.

Sarge, your version sporting the most austere nose stencilled version over the PRR yellow road numbers and radio decal is well done indeed, you're having too much fun here if not making me green with envy.

As an aside I had a pair of the Atlas Centuries , a C628 in a nice factory PC, and a C630 undec which I rendered in the factory Brunswick (posted here two purges ago) They were a fine looking pair, though I got irritated with them deprogramming themselves on my sketchy track and lighting up every damn LED in their carbodies after two or three turns. I traded them for a CLW U25B and USH KTM GP-35 and miss them only occasionally but they were excellent models. Alas I have no appetite nor efficient skill for working through the Quantum board issues, too much like work.

[sarge]

Pete et al

We can digress a little about that aside of your's.

The QSI Quantum is probably pretty cool, for its day, but really illustrates the problem with AtlasO in the Jim Weaver era (why the OGR crowd considers him a near-deity I do not know) and still to a degree today.

Now, this one works still, using an equally old MRC Prodigy system, so perhaps the whole package has a bit of the cast-in-ambre quality about it. That said, three problems.

First is compatibility. In my case this thing is an operational loner. You have no choice but DCC, and totally incompatible in this day and age when DCC and sound are seen as choices with conventional an equal alternative and battery R/C up and coming as a third choice. In the heady days, Quantum and its ilk were intended to become the sole successor, NMRA compliance be damned, DC is dead, sound is universal, the whole schtik. Didn't work out that way, thankfully. What we have here, though, is a unit that either must go it alone or I have to find a mate for it. Not a sales bellringer after all.

The second flaw is this. I could reach and say the whole mentality came from the then modern hirail world, where incompatibility of systems rather fit nicely in the brand-loyalty ingrained in that world. Brand loyalty never caught on here over a century's time and still doesn't; the cross-over importers misread the scale marketplace in that regard.

Importantly from that world also came (and still comes) the notion of warranties, service-stations, all that idiotic crap. Guaranteed disposability is engineered in that model, because it is intended to have few or no parts made at the same time for that "service-station" to fix your broken toy. Oh, well, you'll have to buy a new one because its out of warranty. No user serviceable parts inside. The whole toy-train service-station is ingrained and expected in three rail, but we just don't do that. Most of us are used to fixing our own models, doing maintenance, even building the dam things. They didn't figure that we aren't lost when it comes to such things, but the product is engineered to be pretty dependent on parts with a very limited availability over a short term. Try and get replacement boards, gears; disposable. No parts to back up the product, and designed to be unrepairable; rather than accepted, that just generates a brand disloyalty here in our world.

Last is obsolescence. Because this system is so pervasively integrated, you can't upgrade these things so the model becomes rather like a flip-phone. Technology marches forward at an ever more dizzying pace, so something of this nature becomes obsolete tech, and probably the model itself was thought of as a disposable like any piece of tech by a generation who thinks nothing of tossing an $800 phone when it gets replaced by a new $1000 phone. The modern way of thinking had the Weaver-era Atlas rather cynically making disposables on purpose; can't upgrade so replace it. The result, is there are a lot of people who didn't flock to the banner as they were intended to do, and a glut occurred of this stuff. More and more obsolete, more and more worthless because of it, and the blue fades off one end of the box as it still sits on a shelf waiting for someone to pay near retail. And sits and sits........and sits.

So, all is not lost. I did the paintwork and the weathering, but one task remains. Once the novelty wears off regarding the Quantum DCC/sound system, there will be a day or two given over to carefully removing the boards that are literally stuffed in that carbody. Once stripped back to pickups on one end and motors on the other, then it gets completely rewired with NMRA compatible plugwork so NMRA compliant DCC can be installed if desired. Done as it should have been, that makes it a model that can be upgraded easily as the technology evolves rather than a disposable toy that relies on a standards-be-damned system that you have no ability to upgrade in kind nor choice of system your railroad employs to run it.

I somehow don't think in the post-China-bubble world there is any warranty to be declined by a now non-existant "service-station" because I changed the paint.

[De Bruin]

Interesting observations, and to reply on a few.

Never really considered it before but have to agree the traditional three rail "authorized factory service" model has appeared to be something the Blue, Yellow and Orange box purveyors thought they could leverage into a supplemental annuity revenue stream like the car, office equipment, machine tool industries and yes, certain vertical hobby channels employ as well as a goodly chunk of the RC business
(hang around the few retail hobby shops left and you'll see what I mean)
which is where many fellows still find or perhaps lose themselves now.

As a further aside that revenue stream is dying off faster than you can say noble congressmen. Makes sense- throw in that brand loyalty factor for some and it strengthens the case. I was amazed at all the warranty cards, survey and idiot skel step-by manual 's etc. included with the "box-world" models, but again makes sense in that context.

I'm a member of the NMRA for reasons having nothing to do with model building but have to ask what the "recipe" is for the NMRA compliant plug work to installing a future decoder as I may want to consider incorporating that into my rework as I have a deep queue of models to redo along the lines of your Atlas, P&D and Weaver sporting that black paint. Perhaps a schematic or link can be posted for general consumption and Luddite stone throwing? Honestly its been decades since I even thought about NMRA standards outside of that damn metal track, clearance and coupler gauge. I would hope most everything I work up could get resold, installing a contingency for board installation seems entirely sensible in terms of listing the model's features and increasing desirability.
Thanks.
Pete